''Night Shift'' is a video game developed by
Attention to Detail
Attention to Detail Ltd (ATD) was a British video game developer based in Hatton. Founded by University of Birmingham graduates in September 1988, it was acquired by Kaboom Studios in January 1997. The studio shut down in August 2003 due to f ...
and published in
1990
File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of Humankind, humanity on Earth, Astroph ...
by
Lucasfilm Games
Lucasfilm Games (known as LucasArts between 1990 and 2021) is an American video game licensor that is part of Lucasfilm. It was founded in May 1982 by George Lucas as a video game development group alongside his film company; as part of a large ...
. It is an action game where the hero is a worker in a factory owned by Industrial Might and Logic (a parody of
Industrial Light & Magic
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) is an American motion picture visual effects company that was founded on May 26, 1975 by George Lucas. It is a division of the film production company Lucasfilm, which Lucas founded, and was created when he began pro ...
). The player's character ensures that the factory is working properly as it cranks out ''
Star Wars
''Star Wars'' is an American epic film, epic space opera multimedia franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the Star Wars (film), eponymous 1977 film and quickly became a worldwide popular culture, pop-culture Cultural impact of S ...
'' action figures, including those of
stormtroopers and
Darth Vader
Darth Vader is a fictional character in the ''Star Wars'' franchise. The character is the central antagonist of the original trilogy and, as Anakin Skywalker, is one of the main protagonists in the prequel trilogy. ''Star Wars'' creator George ...
. The object of the game is to always ensure the factory is working properly, and to move into increasingly better homes.
Development
Developed by Jon Dean, Chris Gibbs, Fred Gill, John Steele, Jim Torjussen, and Martin Green, the game was first conceived as ''Fixit'', revolving around a factory worker trying to keep a machine nicknamed "Beast" from breaking down, while simultaneously needing to be charged by a bicycle-based generator every few minutes. Inspired by Gibbs' childhood love of engineering, who built upon the idea and suggested that they have the player run through part of the machine as an animated
platform game
A platform game (often simplified as platformer and sometimes called a jump 'n' run game) is a sub-genre of action video games in which the core objective is to move the player character between points in an environment. Platform games are charac ...
, renaming the project ''Mr. Fixit''. Dean met with LucasArts' producers, who were receptive to the idea but wanted to make use of their existing intellectual properties as well. Dean redesigned the game's concept to tie into them more readily, and added a female playable character to add "feminine appeal" to the title. The game was rebranded ''Night Shift'' at the suggestion of LucasArts, and Dean developed the manual around the idea of an employee handbook, inspired by manuals used in
Infocom
Infocom was an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced a business application, a relational database called ''Cornerstone (software), Cornerstone''.
...
games.
References
External links
An article about Night Shift in Crash Magazine*
*
*
1990 video games
Attention to Detail games
DOS games
ZX Spectrum games
LucasArts games
Amstrad CPC games
Commodore 64 games
Amiga games
Atari ST games
U.S. Gold games
Video games featuring protagonists of selectable gender
Video games scored by David Lowe
Video games developed in the United Kingdom
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